Moment 21 - Professor Green on The Source Of Your Success

00:04I remember listening to your music when I was in when I was in secondary school a lot and I remember listening to a lot of your records more recently as well and even you know like as as when I knew you were coming in today I started like going back through my old back catalogue of your music um at the time when you made it as you said then in the UK in the UK hip-hop scene as a white male that's a fucking staggering accomplishment like do you know no genuinely it is i'm like i know a lot because you might not know this but you're from the jump off days yep and i'm all the don't flop boys they're all best friends of mine like i don't know if you know you know unanimous i don't know if you know you know okay he'll be offended but um no but like you know yeah yeah yeah they used to come to my house sometimes for five days in a row and like stay at my house and they'd rap and stuff i used to write music back in those days as well but watching how talented a lot of these people are at what they do and still a lot of them haven't made it like you did yeah makes me beg the question it's like what were the factors that came to play to make sure that you as a white rapper in the uk scene got through um do you

01:13know what just persistence persistence persistence i just didn't stop you know there were so many full starts as well starting to mike skinner's record label me and him me being lazy not working as hard as I should have when um during the period when I signed to his label um and I can put my hands up and say that but us also biting heads and not agreeing on music up until a point and then just as we did and he sent a really kind email and he was like look I've been spending too long trying to make you into something that you're not rather than focusing on what you're good at let's go um and it was almost at that point when Warner pulled the financing from his label they were subsidizing his label they moved everything in house apart from all of their the rest uh part sorry i think it was six seven nine uh was the label they kept and they moved that in-house and then they they pulled the financing from the rest of their subsidiaries because of napster and limewire you know the the the money they were seeing had had fallen subsequently because of all the piracy um so the album never came out for two reasons because the label lost their financing because I never worked hard enough.

02:19And then after that, I went back to what I knew and what facilitated me being able to continue my quest to become a successful musician, which, by the way, I thought would absolve me of everything in my past and just make me happy. What did you find out? That was bullshit, wasn't it? What a stupid fucking idea that was. So you thought that becoming a successful musician would put your past at ease, basically? yeah you just you just you and this is what's dangerous about pinning um your happiness or your your hopes of happiness on an ever moving goalpost that quite often you move yourself if i sell this many records i'm going to be happy and then you sell that many records and then it's like okay if i get a number one single i'm going to be happy then you get the number one single and then it's like well what's next you talked about this earlier you said about how you've got to enjoy the moment more yeah else you'll never enjoy like yeah yeah how do you do that though in the moment um in the moment i don't like so for me i'm just it's just it's been a really really long journey towards not you know going back to the corners you can't see around this it's just taking it for what it is it's like i'm here and i'm i'm entirely present my head is not worrying

03:28about the meeting that i've got to go to afterwards i'm aware of it because i've seen my schedule but i'm not thinking about it and i used to like i would lay in bed and my mind would be spinning spinning spinning about everything that i had coming up there's no like it's good to plan like and i find you worry more if you don't plan but i try and look at you know i don't look at my calendar too far ahead anymore because it doesn't help me you know i i want to be present i want to be able to be here and have a conversation with you to look you in the eye and talk to you without having other shit in my head you know an empty head and an open heart man that's that's that's how you're present and they're not the easiest things to achieve when we all have so much going on in our lives and when we're always so like ambitious because when like as you say the moving goalpost analogy i really like because i will achieve something today but before the day of even achieving it i've already set the new goal do you know what i mean and so you never experience the achievement and i've i've actually since leaving my business one of my mentors said to me is like you just need to he's that old and he's done it all and he's way more successful

04:29than i'll probably ever be and he was like the one advice i'll give you steve is just like try your very best to enjoy it in the moment yeah because you look back on it with you know rose tinted glasses and you you know you wish you had just savored it more yeah but you can enjoy it in hindsight and it is what i was saying earlier you look back on it and you go wow i did that but actually it's the the accolades are not that important the the rewards are are they're they're part of it if you're lucky enough to achieve but the process is the part of it that you have to enjoy and that's the i think that's the struggle that's why a lot of people don't necessarily find themselves that happy because they're not in situations where they're happy to be doing the work that they're doing to get to where they want to be and that's perhaps because they're in the wrong place where they want to be and what they're doing to get there don't you know they don't marry up and we're fortunate we do things we love we get to pick and choose that's that's uh you know I was going to say that's lucky, but it's not.

05:28It's hard work and perseverance. What do you worry about then these days? I mean, most recently in the last two weeks, it's been like, is that noise that my son's making in his sleep normal? So for context, Stephen's just had a new kid. Yeah. A new baby boy. Yeah. Which is amazing. My first child. And really, you know, just, I mean, yeah, just the things that I encounter day to day I'm not really too I don't know man like it's weird to be at this point in my life in my career about to sign a new record deal to be putting music out again but to not have that like my energy is different I'm just excited in being able to have a route to market I've had all this music that because of some stupid problems I had with the label I was with that I couldn't put out I wasn't able to to to exercise that part of you know what I did and that I missed terribly because that's my output that's my creative output you know I enjoy working on all the other things I'm doing whether it's a gulp or giz and greens anything all the ideas that I have that I you know will hopefully come into fruition later on that I'm chipping away at behind the scenes.

06:45But music is my output. That's my hobby. It always has been. So when I get suppressed and I'm not able to work on music or release music and they kind of go hand in hand because it's kind of weird working on music that you know you can't release or that you know someone is standing in the way off. You don't feel as motivated to get in the studio and work. Whereas now I'm like, I don't know, but I'm not worried about how it's received. I'm just really happy to be able to put music out.

07:14My worries are not what they were. All the things I used to worry about, you know, I mean, I don't have financial security yet. And I'm in a much better place than I could have been growing up where I grew up. It wasn't what was expected. But, you know, I have to pay my mortgage. I have things like that. But there's, you know, they're not worries. I have to work to pay, you know, that's again, you know, work can be a stressor. It can just be work.

07:38My mortgage can be a stressor. It can just be a mortgage. I just have to work. there's quite simple things that I have to do in order to pay my mortgage you know so I try and not get bogged down by the everyday shit my worries are just whatever pops up and are they worries you know and I get to know a child like am I holding my child correctly things like that they're my current concerns